Check your tech: Whose responsibility is it when cyberharassment occurs?

Social media has become a dominant aspect of many people’s lives in many countries. Unfortunately that resulted in widespread issues of bullying and harassment. While frequently this harrassment is intentional, there have been occasions where automated processes have been inadvertently responsible for this sort of harassment. The software tools that allow people to harass others could have further features added to them to reduce the amount of harassment that occurs, but more often than not, where programmers are developing these systems then don’t anticipate the range of ways that these technologies will be used (this is called “consequence scanning”). The authors of this paper are developing a new digital ethics curriculum for the instruction of computer science students. In this paper we present two case studies we have developed with a focus on cyberharrassment. Each case study is accompanied by a list of specific questions to be used by the instructor to allow students to evaluate the implications of developing social media systems as well as a generic case studies checksheet that allow deeper reflection on the intended and unintended consequences of introducing new technologies.